[PRODUCT REVIEW] LaserMax Guide Rod Laser

Posted by Brandon on 12/14/2013

Our first laser review, and we’re thrilled to have tried this one out. If you aren’t familiar with LaserMax, they are a company that designs lasers for different firearms and are located in Rochester, NY. Their popular Guide Rod Laser, the same one we’ll be reviewing today, is light-years ahead of other products we have seen. Our review will take place with a Glock 27.

Product

This 100% internal Guide Rod Laser is there when you need it with a quick tap of the take-down lever. It’s so easy it’s stupid. With the product, you get a new take-down lever as well as a new spring. This new lever is a bit wider than the factory lever, and allows the user to push in from either side to engage and disengage the laser easily.

The laser can be operated in temperatures ranging from 15 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The output power is the brightest available at 5mW, and the laser also blinks for higher visibility.

With a compact firearm such as the Glock 27, we personally enjoy internal lasers much more than external. Not only do we not have to find a special holster to house our firearm and laser, we also have no added bulk at all.

The laser is housed inside a specially designed recoil spring. It’s good to note that the recoil spring is of excellent quality and seems to bring aspects of the Generation 4 recoil springs. It’s solid.

Installation

One never knows what to expect when installing an accessory to their firearms, but this one has us scratching our heads. Not because we couldn’t figure it out, but because it was so incredibly simple to accomplish. In under 3 minutes (yes, 3 minutes), we had our new Guide Rod Laser assembly installed and ready to go.

On the smaller Glocks such as the G27, all you need to do is the following:

Field-strip your firearm

Push down on the spring with the tool provided, and remove the take-down lever

Remove the spring

Replace with the new spring

Push down on new spring and slide new take-down lever in place

Put your firearm back together with the new Guide Rod Laser, paying attention to alignment

And that’s it. It’s really that simple.

Usage

To activate the laser, the user simply needs to push in -from either side- the new extended take-down lever. A quick and easy push activates the laser, and a push back to the middle from the opposite side deactivates.

If you hold your Glock, for example, your trigger finger should be right around the take-down lever when extended next to the frame. This makes it second nature to have yourself ready to activate the laser where your finger would already be once you draw.

Accuracy

This particular laser is already aligned out of the box. Because of it’s uniqueness, there is no need to align after install. We drove over to the range as soon as we had this baby installed to give it a try. We were not disappointed. It’s the closest to the bore that you can get without putting a laser inside the bore itself (which isn’t an option, so don’t try and think up some new laser idea).

We had excellent grouping at 10 yards, and wasn’t disappointed at 25 yards either. The blinking laser was very visible even inside our well-lit range.

Dead accurate without a single adjustment needed. There’s really not a lot left to say about the accuracy of this laser. It’s that good.

Battery Life

According to LaserMax, you can expect to change your batteries just once a year. This doesn’t seem unreasonable to us at all, and we will update this article once the time to change batteries occurs.

Final Thoughts

This laser is great. We really don’t know what else to say. If you’re looking for an internal laser for your concealed carry firearm that is dead-on, look no further than the LaserMax Guide Rod Laser.

One thing to mention is this: While reviewing this product, our first concern was that the extended take-down lever would be accidentally pushed in one direction or the other by our holster, turning on the laser. We haven’t found this to be the case (at least with the Crossbreed Holster). So far, so good!

Brandon is the founder of Concealed Nation and is an avid firearm enthusiast, with a particular interest in responsible concealed carry. His EDC is a Glock 27 that holds Hornady 165 gr FTX Critical Defense rounds, and rides comfortably in an Alien Gear Cloak Tuck 2.0 holster.